President Donald Trump has set a troubling record in his first year back in office for failed presidential nominations.
Trump has withdrawn more nominees in 2025 than any U.S. president in the past four decades, according to an analysis from Wake Up to Politics writer Gabe Fleisher, who examined every presidential appointment process since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was in office.
Fleisher found that Trump—despite two months still left in the year—has already outpaced every other modern president, surpassing Barack Obama, who withdrew 35 nominees in 2009.
The report follows the collapse of Paul Ingrassia’s nomination—Trump’s 49th failed pick—after leaked text messages revealed the White House liaison had admitted to having a “Nazi streak.”
Ingrassia, 30, serves as the White House’s liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, and was nominated by Trump to lead the Office of Special Counsel.
He withdrew his nomination Tuesday after several key Republicans indicated that they would no longer vote to confirm him over text messages exposed in Politico, which reported that he used racial slurs and raged that Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.” Ingrassia’s lawyer, Edward Andrew Paltzik, however, has questioned the authenticity of the text messages.
Trump’s first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination in November after a series of seedy allegations against him, including a White House Ethics probe that explored if he paid as much as $10,000 to have sex with women and a 17-year-old girl while in his mid-30s. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Another failed pick, Ed Martin, was tapped by the president in February to become the U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C.
Martin drew backlash after praising a Nazi sympathizer during a Trump fundraising event last summer. But his nomination was ultimately tanked in May amid scrutiny over his involvement in the “Stop the Steal” movement, which sought to overturn the 2020 election.
Another pick who didn’t make it over the finish line was Dave Weldon, who lost out on leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March after failing to secure key support in the Senate due to his controversial comments about vaccines.
Weldon had previously linked vaccines to autism—a claim that has been debunked numerous times. He also questioned the safety of the measles vaccine, echoing the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spread misinformation about the MMR vaccination several times.
MAGA infighting led another pick, Jared Isaacman, to lose out on his chance of leading NASA in May. The president blamed Isaacman’s “prior associations”—a not-so-subtle jab at his relationship with Elon Musk, who was locked in a public feud with Trump at the time.
The White House withdrew Bureau of Labor Statistics nominee E.J. Antoni, an economist for conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, from consideration after his controversial social media posts were unearthed.
The since-deleted profile, which had misogynistic attacks on Kamala Harris and homophobic remarks, was exposed in August —roughly a month before his nomination was pulled.
Not every withdrawal stemmed from controversy. Rep. Elise Stefanik, for instance, withdrew her bid as a U.N. ambassador to ensure Republicans keep hold of their razor-thin majority in the House.
And Alina Habba, the president’s former personal attorney, was set to become a federal prosecutor until she failed to earn the support of two Democratic senators in her native New Jersey. The Senate typically demands that home-state senators vouch for prosecutorial nominees.
The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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